Dear Colleagues, In Greece, the last couple of years there is a velvet dictatorship. Social rights are being revoked, freedom,democracy and people are being targeted. Last Wednesday one of us fell victim of this situation. Stratos Georgoulas, Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of the Aegean, host of the 38th Annual Conference of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control, was up for promotion in the position of Associate Professor having fulfilled all the criteria required by the Law governing the Greek Higher Education. His application was turned down (the committee was constituted by 10 individuals, 5of which voted in favour and 5 voted against his promotion) on the grounds ofhis political convictions, based on the fact that part of his work has been published by a publishing house of allegedly leftist orientation (as one member of the electoral body claimed). It has to be noted here that Stratos is also the president of the Local Association of the Teachers and Researchers of the University of the Aegean and as such he has repeatedly been in conflict with the Universityʼs authorities regarding the consequences that the austerity measures have in the Greek Public University Sector. After the results have been announced there has been organized a massive campaign by the students (undergraduate, postgraduateand Ph.D. candidates) of the Department of Sociology at the University of the Aegean claiming the annulment of the electoral process which not only was offensive in terms of academic criteria but also illegitimate as far asprocedural criteria are concerned (overlooking the law was the only way toprevent Dr Georgoulas from being promoted as - as already mentioned - his CV was more than adequate for such a promotion). The issues has been picked up by the local and national press as well as by blogs, social media etc. During the present week general student assemblies from other departments are scheduled in order to support the claims of their colleagues from the Department of Sociology and to put pressure to the Rector of the University of the Aegean to annul the electoral process that took place last Wednesday as he is the only one who has the legal authority to do so and to ask for the repetition of anelectoral process which will follow all the protocols required by the law. Therefore, we ask the Rector of the University of Aegean to examine his objection regarding the above mentioned electoral process in a manner that secures the legitimacy of the process. In addition,should the information we received about the attempted politicization of academic criteria during the aforementioned electoral process are accurate we ask the Rector to condemn this attempt. Academic criteria are the only criteria that should be taken into account in the electoral process of a member of the academia of which Dr Georgoulas is an acknowledged member both nationally and internationally